


a matter of holding

by concernedlily



Series: while you're making other plans [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: (for the relationship at least), Angst, Break Up, Established Relationship, Game retelling, Happy Ending, M/M, re-established relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 05:50:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13606887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concernedlily/pseuds/concernedlily
Summary: “It doesn’t mean anything,” Noct said, and Ignis smiled, and didn’t look him in the eye. “It’s just... politics, Ignis, it doesn’tchangeanything, okay? I still -”





	a matter of holding

**Author's Note:**

> CAVEAT EMPTOR: I started this story a really long time ago, and then abandoned it for a longer time, and then Ep Ignis came along and totally killed my interest in it. Because this was going to be a long, plotty fix-it fic, and now it doesn't need fixing, because we have the greatest alt ending ever! So I messed with this, and took out the stuff that was supposed to set up things down the line, and kept it to the relationship (which lbr that's why we're here!), and it's not the greatest but I thought it might as well moulder away on AO3 as in my google drive. For those who don't mind reading a story that's kind of like a charity-shop jigsaw with some bits missing, I hope you enjoy!

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Noct said, and Ignis smiled, and didn’t look him in the eye. “It’s just... politics, Ignis, it doesn’t _change_ anything, okay? I still -”

The door to the cathedra opened and Clarus looked out. “Prince Noctis? Your father has a little more time, if you’re ready.”

 _You’d better be ready_ , was the unspoken meaning. Like Dad had done Noct a big favour, letting him have a minute alone with Ignis.

“He is,” Ignis said. He sounded totally calm but Noct could see in the lines on his face what it was costing him, the effort of keeping his voice from fraying. “I’ll take my leave, Lord Amicitia. There’s much to do if the prince is to leave so soon.”

“Thank you,” Clarus said, and he was abruptly sympathetic. “Ignis - could you send my son to me? I’d like to dine with both of my children tonight.”

“Of course,” Ignis said, and bowed, and didn’t look so much as in Noct’s direction as he left.

“Prince Noctis,” Clarus said, holding the door open, but Noct watched until Ignis was out of sight, thinking maybe Ignis would look back. He didn’t: his shoulders stayed straight and his head stayed bowed all through the great hall and down the steps.

“Yeah,” he said, quietly, and went back in to hear his father tell Noct how fucking necessary it was that he marry Luna.

***

“I know this is hard,” Dad said, when he’d finally finished going on and on and on about duty, and the kingdom, and how it was time to see if some peace could be made with the Empire, open up beyond the Wall again, how great it would be for Lucis, how much everyone would love Noct for being the one to make it happen.

Noct didn’t care if everyone loved him or not. Just whether one still did.

“Is that everything?” he said.

Dad shifted like he might be going to touch him and said, “Noct…” and Noct moved away, just a tiny bit, enough to get out of reach.

“Yes,” Dad said, and sighed. “That’s everything, Noctis. I’ll see you again before you leave.”

***

He ran into Gladio on the way out, coming in for dinner with Clarus and Iris. 

“Hey,” Gladio said, very gently, and put his hand on Noct’s shoulder.

“You talked to Ignis?” Noct said. “You know, about the trip, and the... and the wedding -”

“Yeah,” Gladio said. He looked really serious, especially because he was dressed formally, in a Crownsguard dress uniform with his hair combed back. Noct’s gaze was drawn as it still always was to the scar that crossed half his face. He’d been lucky to keep the eye, and Noct had been lucky to keep him: a half-blind Shield was no good to the King of Lucis.

“Did he say if he’s coming with me?” Noct blurted, and had to blink furiously to hide that his eyes were suddenly wet.

“Of course he’s coming,” Gladio said, quick enough and looking surprised enough that Noct knew it had to be true. His knees almost wobbled under him and he leaned into Gladio. “Noct, whatever else… he’s your friend. He ain’t gonna abandon you now.”

Noct said, “Whatever _else_?” Like their relationship was a sideshow, not the main damn event; like it wasn’t everything to Noct, so much so he’d pretty much forgotten over the last three years that Ignis was supposed to be his marshal, that seeing to Noct had started out as Ignis’s job.

Gladio drew him into a darker corner of the great hall and left his arm around Noct’s shoulders even when Noct tried to shrug him off. “Hey, calm down, okay? Noct, come on. You must’ve thought… both of you guys must have known.”

“Known what,” Noct spat.

“That you’d have to marry,” Gladio said. Noct tried to break away from him and Gladio shoved him up against the wall, not roughly, just firmly. “The bloodline has to continue. You know how babies are made, right, Noct? You knew you were gonna have to get a girl.”

“Get _off_ me,” Noct said, and pushed him, and Gladio let himself be pushed, stepping back and holding up his hands.

“You never thought about it?” Gladio said, sounding genuinely curious. “I knew you guys were serious, but come on, Noct. Your kid, and mine, you know? The Amicitia have always stood by the Caelia. I always figured that’s how it would be.”

“I know,” Noct said. The fight had gone out of him: he leaned back against the wall. “You’re going to be late for your dad. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“She’s a nice girl,” Gladio said, and Noct could tell he was trying to be kind. “You’re gonna be good together.”

***

He hurried inside his block, tapped his foot as the elevator shot up, and called out for Ignis as soon as he got into the apartment. 

The lack of response froze him with misery and he walked in more slowly. Stupid, really, to be upset by Ignis leaving early: in a couple of days they’d head out to Altissia and his dad had informed Noct that he’d be bringing his bride back to live in the Citadel while everyone got used to things, so he was going to be out of this apartment whatever happened. He dropped onto the couch and toppled over, burying his face in one of the cushions. 

He couldn’t have brought Luna here anyway. Not to the home he’d shared with Ignis, where he’d been… where they’d been happy.

He got up after a while and went to the sideboard. It took a bit of rummaging, but eventually he found what he was looking for: a pressed Tenebraen sylleblossom in a pretty wooden box. Luna had sent it in the book, not long after the Empire’s attack and their parting. It had held up well, the colours still vivid, but when Noct touched it gingerly a couple of petals curled up and crumbled away. 

He hadn’t really noticed when the book stopped coming. He’d looked back what might have been three or six months after the last time and just realised that it had: that that simple, sweet line of communication had faded softly away. There had been formal cards instead, on solstices and Noct’s birthday, the Empire giving the Nox Fleuret family the dubious honour of pretending they still had the same status even with the elder Oracle dead and the country under Nif control, with a few sweet personal lines from Luna and an elegant looping signature in ink. Noct hadn’t missed the book, really. There had been Prompto to hang out with, and then stepping up training with his dad and Gladio, and then there’d been Ignis.

“Noct?” Ignis said behind him. 

Noct turned and he could see the moment Ignis’s gaze fell to the flower Noct was still touching. Ignis’s face crumpled and Noct scrambled up, everything in his lap falling to the floor, and said, “ _No_ , Ignis, I’m not… I was just thinking, I’m sorry.”

“You needn’t apologise,” Ignis said, and Noct hated the politeness in his tone. “I merely came to fetch one or two things.”

“No,” Noct said, shaking his head. “Please don’t go, Ignis.”

“I think it’s best I do,” Ignis said quietly. “And Gladio called me. I’m sorry if I made you feel I’d be reluctant to join you on your… on the journey. Of course, I will. My place is at your side, that doesn’t change.”

“Your place isn’t at my _side_ ,” Noct cried, desperate, and he went to Ignis, grabbed him tight, feeling Ignis’s arms close around him with desperate almost bruising force, holding him tight even as Ignis avoided Noct’s attempts to kiss him. _This_ was Ignis’s place, here, like this, his hands on Noct, the two of them entwined. Noct’s magic joined the fray as well, pooling around them and wrapping tendrils around Ignis’s wrists and waist and chest and throat, instinctively responding to the threat that was clogging Noct’s throat and piercing his heart.

“Nothing has to change. Please, Ignis,” and he managed to get Ignis’s face up with a firm grip on his chin, looking into his eyes, and Ignis groaned deep in his body as Noct pulled him into a drowning kiss.

It was a wonderful minute of deep, yearning kissing and Noct _hoped_ , with everything he was, feeling Ignis’s hair under his fingers and Ignis’s hands sliding greedy under his t-shirt to feel skin, like always, their bodies perfectly aligned so Noct was sheltered by the breadth of his chest, the puzzle-piece fit of their hips together. 

And then Ignis dragged himself away and said, “No. Noct, we can't,” and Noct tried to follow him, made an unwilling longing noise in his throat when Ignis fended his hands away, gently, with an awful look in his eyes. 

“Please,” Noct said again. It wasn't seemly for a king to beg, but he'd do it, he'd do everything and more not to lose Ignis. “Please, Ignis, this doesn't change anything.”

“Of course it does,” Ignis said, his voice scraping. “It must. Now more than ever Lucis needs the strength of its royal family. Needs the… the continuation of the royal family.”

“My family doesn't have anything to do with us,” Noct said. Like he was even - even if he had to get married, it wasn't like he was going to get settled and start shoving out kids immediately. Like it was some gift to some poor baby, to have to take on the crystal and the kingdom. The thought of being so intimate with anyone but Ignis was terrible, even Luna, who in some ways got him the way nobody else could. The bond of Oracle and King would always be there between them, strong and shining, but Ignis saw _Noct_. He couldn't bear the thought of being touched by anyone else. 

“We need to be sensible,” Ignis said. His eyes looked reddened; Noct couldn't tell if maybe he'd been crying already, or might now, and it made his fingers itch for weaponry, his magic alert and enthusiastic inside him, ready to defend. It was easier to focus on that than the black wave of denial and sorrow that seemed ready to crash over him. Ignis said, “Lady Lunafreya. She deserves better than a faithless husband. And you,” he took a deep breath, as if whatever he had to say next pained him, as if it had to be prepared for, and Noct tried to go to him again automatically, reaching out to comfort and cringing when Ignis shied away from him. 

Then Ignis stepped forward again, caught Noct’s hand, and Noct tangled their fingers and squeezed desperately, feeling the axe poised over their heads, as Ignis said, “You deserve a partnership where there is trust. There's so much ahead of you, Noctis. You need a marriage with trust, where you'll… where there's love.”

“I _have_ that,” Noct said. He put his hand to Ignis’s cheek again, feeling small and powerless and ruined. “We’ll explain it to her…”

“That's not worthy of you,” Ignis said. 

“I don't care!” Noct yelled. 

“Then it's not fair on me!” Ignis shouted back and he ripped himself away from Noct’s touch, leaving his hand in the air, tingling with magic, the bond between them scrabbling for purchase. “To watch you with your _wife_ , Noct… to get whatever of you she and the kingdom can spare, in secret…”

Tears touched Noct’s cheek and he said helplessly, “I didn't mean… I'm sorry.”

“I know,” Ignis said softly. He was crying now too, his eyes brightly green and wet, but even as Noct watched he could see Ignis’s defences starting to build back up, the distance between them of prince and advisor he'd thought happily abandoned so many years ago. “I know you didn't… you wouldn't want this. But we must make the best of what we’re called to face, Noct. A King must move forward.” He stepped forward and caught Noct's hand, brought it to his lips and kissed the back of it, Noct squeezing down on his grasp desperately. “I will always be yours. But we can't be together any longer.”

Noct pulled him close and Ignis came willingly for another kiss. The last kiss, the last time he'd ever feel this, and Noct couldn't believe it, had to force himself to try to memorise it, Ignis’s mouth on his, the way Ignis touched him like he was so precious, so adored. 

He had to be the one to back off but he couldn't, and finally Ignis did it. Stepped away, and gave the traditional bow, his fist on his shoulder, and Noct had to turn away: he couldn't watch as Ignis left him.

***

His phone woke him up. Noct ignored it the first three times, staring up at the ceiling, his whole body aching, and then when the calls kept coming he grabbed it and said, “What,” into it without even checking who was calling. 

“Hey, bridegroom!” Prompto said, cautiously.

Noct sat up and pressed his other hand against his eyes. “Fuck,” he said softly, not at Prompto, just generally. “Did you talk to Gladio?”

“I heard it on the news!” Prompto said. “Way to keep your BFF updated.”

“I didn't…” Noct said. He swallowed and tried again. “Ignis left.”

He heard Prompto’s sharp intake of breath and took pleasure in it, childishly. Most people didn't know about Noct and Ignis, wouldn't even know that something had been broken in the joining of Lucis and Tenebrae. Prompto’s reaction soothed a little bit of the jaggedness inside Noct, just that little acknowledgement that it had been real, it had been important. 

“That's rough,” Prompto said. “Um. I’m sorry, dude.”

“Yeah,” Noct said. “Hey. Did it say the wedding is gonna be in Altissia?”

“Yeah! Pretty cool, right? I haven't been outside the Crown City since I was really little but I heard it's amazing.”

“Yeah, great, so,” Noct said hurriedly. He didn't want to hear about how nice Altissia was and how romantic a place it was to get married. Prompto’s mention of the news had depressed the hell out of him: he hadn't even thought about the media. Someone from the palace press office would probably be in touch soon and Noct would have to talk about how thrilled he was about the peace talks and how much he was looking forward to being married to a woman he hadn't seen in twelve years. “My dad set it up so we’re going to drive there, he did this roadtrip thing when he was my age, he said it was the best. Me, Gladio, Ignis, it should only take a week or so. You in?”

“Me? You bet!” Prompto sounded genuinely thrilled to be included and it was heartening: Noct found he was smiling, sort of, which considering he’d gone to sleep seriously thinking he might never smile again was pretty good going. 

“Good,” he said. “I'll get Ignis to call you with the details.”

“Ignis is cool with it?” Prompto said tentatively. 

“Oh, sure,” Noct said, not smiling anymore. “Everything's fine.”

***

Later that day Noct had to go to the citadel and sit in a meeting with half of the Council about his wedding and how Lucis would mark the occasion while Ignis sat next to him, writing everything down in his neatest handwriting and barely saying a word, even when he was asked direct questions. Noct hadn't sat at a table with Ignis where under it they hadn't been holding hands or someone’s palm been on someone’s thigh or had their ankles pressed together for three years. 

And after that, even more fun, as Noct was shepherded into two newspapers and a radio interview so he could lie through his teeth about how thrilled he was. 

There was a photoshoot, too. “You’re very pale,” the makeup woman said, frowning and dabbing stuff on Noct’s cheeks. “Are you always this pale?”

“I didn’t sleep well,” he mumbled. He’d spent the night, was still, missing Ignis every second. Missed him physically, in a way Noct hadn't even thought was real, aching for him. Not for sex, or even closeness, just all of him. 

“Oh, of course!” she said brightly. “It’s so exciting. I was just the same before I was married.”

“Yeah,” Noct said. Across the room he saw Ignis’s shoulders tighten. She’d just put mascara on him so Noct couldn’t cry, but he felt like it.

***

He was summoned back to the citadel for a formal goodbye with his father. 

“Where's Ignis?” he said, looking over Gladio and Prompto. Prompto was almost bouncing with pride in his new Crownsguard uniform, his usual nervousness at being at the palace seeming to be forgotten in the excitement of it, although it would probably come back when they went in: Dad still made Prompto wobble. 

“He went in,” Gladio said. “The King asked for a private word with him.”

“Oh, really,” Noct said, pissed. Ignis and Dad had built up a weird closeness over the last year once Dad had figured out they were together, Dad seeming pleased to have a semi-son who was actually interested in what it was going to take for Noct to be King, but Noct felt Dad shouldn't still get that with Ignis when he'd pretty much forced them to split up. 

The door opened before he could properly work up a head of steam about it and Drautos summoned them in. 

Dad couldn't even be bothered to get up off the throne for his goodbyes, so Noct treated them just as lightly. He didn't know why they had to make such a big thing of it, anyway: they were supposed to have just one honeymoon night in Altissia and come back to the Crown City straight after the wedding for Lucis’s celebrations of the Prince’s marriage, so they were going to be gone for all of about two weeks. 

The horrible thought struck him that maybe Dad intended to abdicate once he'd seen the treaty signed and Noct married off. It was hard to argue he wouldn't deserve it, to enjoy what time he had left with the strain of maintaining the Wall gone, but that wasn't… Noct was _not_ ready to be King. 

He was more surprised when Dad followed him down the steps to say more. Maybe he was feeling bad about trading Noct off to the Nifs, or maybe sentimental about not being there for his kid’s wedding, who knew. Noct didn't have much sympathy to spare: he didn't have room for feeling anything but desolation right now. 

“What did Dad say to you?” he asked Ignis in an undertone when they were at the Regalia and Prompto was inevitably panicking about having forgotten his camera and checking his bag again, even though Noct had personally seen him checking for it three times already this morning. It was nice to have been given the Regalia to make the journey with, at least. Noct wasn't so terrible he couldn't recognise the peacemaking of that gesture. 

“He just wanted to ask me to take care of you,” Ignis said, awkwardly. 

Ignis had been taking care of Noct really well for three years. Noct was mad all over again, on both their behalves, that Dad would say that to Ignis after what he'd done to them. “Oh,” he said. 

***

“Wow, it's weird to leave,” Prompto said, twisting back in his seat to watch the gleaming curve of the Wall receding into the distance as Ignis put his foot down. “ _Wow_. I didn't realise the Crown City really just… stops, doesn't it.”

“That's pretty much the point of the Wall,” Gladio said. “If you ain't in, you're out.”

“Out’s kinda depressing,” Prompto said. 

He had a point. The checkpoint for crossing into the Crown City had been okay from the inside, clean and polished even if pretty old, but the outside was just shabby. Noct knew in his head that there was a big difference between inside the city and out. Even Regis had hardly left in years, too preoccupied with holding the Wall, and his failing health because of it making travel difficult; and once Noct had gone to high school and then university he'd managed to plead his studies and avoid having to join the King on his rare processionals outside Insomnia. It was even more rundown than he remembered, even pretty sad: it was hard to believe the luxuries and sophistication of the city were only a short drive back.

Noct wasn't really looking at the view. He was staring at the back of Ignis’s head, his styled-up hair ruffling a little in the breeze, and the elegant stretch of his arm on the door. 

It was nice to be with his friends. Even though that meant pretty much every moment would be spent with Ignis now with hardly any distractions from the strain of having to remind himself not to just reach for Ignis, rest with him. Even with feeling like they were driving towards a cliff and nobody was going to slam on the brakes, least of all him. 

Movement on the plains caught his eye and he turned to watch. It was a herd of sabertusks, he thought, although he'd never seen any up close. That was one of the most startling things about beyond the Wall, that creatures just wandered around everywhere. The most dangerous thing Noct ever encountered on the streets of the Crown City was a really determined pigeon when he and Prompto ate fries walking along the street.

“Noct?” Ignis said, pretty loud, like maybe he'd already said it a couple times. 

“Yeah, babe?” he said absently. 

There was an uncomfortable silence. Noct curled tighter into his seat and said, “Yes?”

“I simply wanted to know whether you wish to press on to your father’s contact in Hammerhead today,” Ignis said. “It's more than doable before dark.”

Noct stared out over the still plain: it was dusty and boring and terrible, which suited his mood perfectly. Up until a few days ago, he would've been King of all this, too, even though he couldn't imagine what this place or these people could possibly need from him. “Whatever you think, Ignis,” he said dully. “I'm gonna take a nap.”

***

Pushing the car was exhausting, but not so exhausting Noct didn't notice that when it was Ignis’s turn it made him gleam with sweat and his biceps flex and bulge in only his t-shirt and his hair soften and fall the way it did after long, intense sex. It was the saddest boner he'd ever had. 

***

They'd never been camping with all four of them together, and what was a decent-sized tent for two or three turned out to be pretty damn small for four, especially when one was the size of Gladio. Noct had started to kind of enjoy the under canvas thing, especially when he'd been able to lie mostly on top of Ignis instead of on the ground, but now by unspoken agreement he and Ignis were squashed against each side of the tent with Prompto and Gladio in between. For someone little and scrawny, Prompto snored like a freaking dualhorn.

“I can't believe _somebody_ fucked up the car,” Gladio said, and Prompto spluttered an excuse. Noct was pretending to still be asleep, soothed by the familiar rhythms of pointless banter, but mainly because he couldn't look at Ignis being bleary and soft and cranky before his first cup of coffee of the morning and not want to kiss the bad mood off the crease between his eyes. 

“We’re burning light,” Gladio said, at the tail end of whatever they’d been yammering about. Noct felt a slap on his hip, over the sleeping bag, and made sure he didn’t flinch. “Wake him up.”

“You wake him up,” Prompto said.

“Iggy! Hey, Iggy. C’mere and wake Noct up.”

He heard the rustling of Ignis coming back, poking his head in the tent. “He’s been awake for ages,” Ignis said. Ignis had got his coffee, finally, Noct could smell it: he’d still never got a taste for drinking the stuff, but the scent was good to him, now, meant late nights studying at either end of the couch, their legs tangled in the middle, or lazy weekend mornings where they’d fuck, Ignis would read the paper over coffee while Noct dozed with his head smushed comfortingly up to Ignis’s hip, and then they’d fuck again before a late breakfast.

“What?” Prompto said, outraged.

Noct sat up. They were all sleeping fully dressed, which made him feel pretty grubby but he was grateful for it: he could feel Ignis’s gaze on him, and waking up partially naked would have been a reminder he did not need right now.

“I’m up,” he said.

“Good,” Ignis said. “I have a bit of bad news. I had a little chat to Takka at the diner by the garage, and he was very helpful with local tidbits, but when I asked about where to exchange City currency for the local gil, he said that everyone who provided such services has stopped until the treaty is signed and things are a little more certain. Evidently the exchange rate had become rather punishing.”

“Crap,” Prompto said. “So… we’re really flat broke?”

Ignis frowned into his coffee. “Yes. Paying for the Regalia repairs took everything we already had: anything more we wish to spend, we’re going to need to earn. Including the cost of the ferry to Altissia.”

“Great,” Noct said. He shoved the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubbed, hoping maybe he’d wake up back in his own bed, Ignis curled round him, and this whole thing would be a dream. “Any bright ideas? You’re the strategist.”

“Actually,” Ignis said, and took a sip. “Takka had something to say about that as well.”

***

Gladio wanted to meet Takka too and grill him on the local hunts and how exactly they'd be earning this cash, so they all went to the diner. Noct left him to it, and Ignis to frowning over the menu with his recipe notebook open, and went to sit at the table with a plate of fries Ignis had persuaded Takka to give them as an advance on monies to be earned. 

“Cindy’s pretty,” Prompto said dreamily. 

Noct glanced out the window at her, and back at his fries. “I guess, yeah.”

“You think she has a boyfriend?”

“Not really our business, is it?” Noct said, chewing. 

“I guess not,” Prompto said wistfully, still looking out at Cindy leaning over an engine on the forecourt. “Hey, Noct. What's it like to, um, _be with_ someone you really like?”

Noct dropped a fry and it swam in his little pool of ketchup. He turned, automatically, seeking Ignis, and their gazes met, Ignis already looking over at Noct, as steady and adoring as he'd ever been. His vision glittered at the edges with magic, reaching helplessly for Ignis, and Ignis jolted as if he felt it, arched back just a little and showed his throat enough to make Noct ache.

He didn't even know how to deal with the question. Maybe that was the whole answer: he'd felt like he could deal with anything when he had Ignis. When he'd had Ignis, he hadn't felt afraid. And when they'd been in bed together, he hadn't felt alone. 

“Sorry,” Prompto said, and jostled up to Noct apologetically. “It's just so weird remembering you guys aren't _you guys_ anymore, you know?”

“Yeah,” Noct said. “I know. It's okay.”

***

They went for a walk. There was a whole lot of walking in Leide but there wasn't much to look at. Prompto brought his camera, eagerly, but after they'd trudged out a good half hour he'd lifted it from the strap round his neck maybe twice, and one of those times had just been to snap a shot of Noct tripping over a rock. Otherwise the dusty brown scrubland didn't offer much to inspire the imagination. Just silence, a steady plain and heavy stone with patches of life clinging to it and a soft blue sky, a wide open horizon to lock Noct inside the tiny box of being its king. 

There were some signs of life, although not the varmints or whatever they were they'd been promised: these were animals picking around in the distance, and they didn't show any interest in Noct and his friends, like maybe they weren't used to people venturing this far away from the roads. Noct had never been able to build the strength to let his friends warp around freely in battle, the way the Kingsglaive could bolstered by his dad’s power and the ring, but he had enough juice to be able to grab them and lock onto the Regalia and get them back to it. Maybe without that they wouldn't have gone so far either. 

Noct was lost in thought, or at least the misery of missing Ignis that soundtracked his life now, so it took him a while to put the wreckage they were seeing dotted around together with what he knew of his dad’s war, the offensive thirty years ago that had made his grandfather pull the Wall back to the Crown City in desperation. 

“Wow,” he said, when it clicked. A Nif transport was half out of the earth in front of him: it looked like part of the landscape, just as brown and tired as the rest but as they got closer the violence of it revealed itself in the rust-ridden smear of where it had crashlanded in the valley. 

“Yes,” Ignis said. They'd been walking far apart, all three of the others circling and switching but staying close and letting Noct direct them as his feet had carried him, but now Ignis drew near. “Odd to think of this as a battleground, but some of the fiercest fighting was in this area.”

“We’re so close to the city,” Noct said. 

“Your father’s duty didn't send him as far afield as yours,” Ignis said, so flatly that the hurt behind it sounded out vividly to Noct, and he closed his eyes and didn't turn to look at the expression on Ignis’s face. 

“You ever talk to your old man about the war?” Gladio said, crowding in between them and throwing his arm around Noct’s neck. Noct pushed at him, half-heartedly, glad for both the distraction and the sudden rough comfort. 

“Nah,” he said. “You?” Dad didn't like to talk about the past: Noct barely even knew anything about his own mother, apart from what he and Ignis had gone to the archives and looked up once, when they were younger. Dad had always been focused on trudging grimly forward, on trading the days of his life for those of the Wall. 

“Sure,” Gladio said. “He likes talking about it. The glory days of his youth.”

Noct looked again at the Nif ship. It was silent and empty, nothing but a relic same as the skeleton of some beast lying not so far away, but it was malevolent somehow. Not because it looked alien, on the bare landscape of Leide; because there was enough imperial wreckage around it looked normal.

“I don’t know how glorious they were for my dad,” he said.

***

Noct couldn't sleep, on fire with adrenaline and the savage joy of bloody victory. He'd been fighting his whole life, practically, was expert on almost any kind of weapon anyone put in his hands or that the arsenal chose to offer to him, but he'd never actually put any of it into practice against a real threat. It was an exhilaration working through his entire body that he could: that he could fight, protect his people even in the small way that was taking out the mesmenir that had been hassling Hammerhead. It was maybe the first time he'd ever really felt down to his bones what it meant to be prince, what this power that ran through his blood was really for: guarding the lives people had managed to make for themselves in the dust and difficulty outside the Wall, as much his as any of the courtiers and city dwellers he'd been surrounded by his whole life. 

Ignis had taken charge of the small amount of gil they'd received and got them a meal and a night in the small caravan at the garage. That had felt good too, eating food that they'd earned by sweat and time: it had been really simple, not even as good as what Ignis could do on the camp stove, but it had tasted delicious and filling. 

But now Noct couldn't seem to find sleep, despite his physical exhaustion. He tossed over again in his bunk: it rattled, and Gladio in the one below him made a rustling noise in his sleep in response. 

He was going to wake everyone at this rate. He hopped down as quietly as he could, found his jacket and boots and carried them to the door, slipping out and sitting on the steps to put them on. 

The diner and garage were still lit and open but there was nobody else around: it felt like a deserted world, chilly and quiet. Noct wandered round for a while, exploring the way he'd been too self-conscious to do when there were people, even though most people didn't seem to recognise him as the Crown Prince: it had made more sense when he'd seen the radios and the crappy quality of the newsprint out here. There'd been pictures of the Emperor and the King on the front of one and it had taken Noct a minute to recognise his own father, it was so grainy. 

Away from the pool of light of the outpost it was truly night, the kind of dark that just didn't happen in the city. Ignis had tried to impress on Noct and Prompto the dangerousness of night outside the Wall: his reluctance to drive at night had really affected Noct, the genuine concern he'd seen under Ignis’s dry recitation of statistics and risk. 

It was a clear night and the stars looked so beautiful out here, blooming out from the horizon into the spiralling galaxy above. He wandered further out, captivated, head tilted back to look. The view was calming, and he seemed to be able to breathe deeply for the first time since his dad had told him about the wedding. 

Magic flared blood-crimson in his mind and he realised how far he’d gone, lost in thought. The light and safety of the garage were some distance away, and in between, an oil-slick pool was coalescing into an iron giant, something Noct had only ever seen in books. 

The menacing black of it glinted in the moonlight, viscous and primally repulsive. It looked at Noct, pulling itself painfully out of the ground, and gave him a vacant, bloodthirsty grin.

His birthright was heavy in his body and without meaning to reach for it, the engine blade was in his hand. He could warp-strike to it before it was even out -

“Noct!”

It was Ignis’s voice and its hold on him was far beyond any magical instinct. Ignis was running for him, pale and afraid. He got to Noct and grabbed his hand, pulled him stumbling forward, the warning still a siren battering his senses. 

Ignis dragged him away, sprinting around the _wrong_ of the iron giant. Noct raced at his side back for Hammerhead, Ignis clutching his hand sweaty and tight, keeping him running full pace when Noct would have slowed, checked behind. His magical sense was soft within him again, purring for Ignis instead of from danger.

The moment they hit the lit concrete of the outpost, up behind the diner, Ignis rounded on him, crowding him back against the wall. “What were you _doing_? Noct -”

“I didn’t mean to,” Noct protested. Ignis was close, looking severe with his eyes glittering, and Noct was dizzy with the earlier fight and sleeplessness and the near disaster, his magic still flaring around him and reaching anxiously for Ignis, and he couldn’t take it another second. 

It hadn't been that long since they'd touched. Barely a week, but it felt like it had been an age and this was coming home, Ignis’s arms going around him and his hand cupping Noct’s head as they crashed back against the wall, Ignis’s mouth urgent on his. It was just a taste but it was heavenly, having it again, and he made an eager noise into Ignis’s mouth before Ignis muffled it with his tongue, both of them just as desperate and hungry.

Ignis started to kiss along his cheek but then his hands on Noct flattened, slow and reluctant as if he was about to pull away, and Noct dragged him closer. “Don’t stop,” he begged, hauling Ignis in, his fingers almost bruisingly tight but he couldn’t make himself relax them. Ignis groaned and came back to Noct’s mouth, like that was all the propriety and resistance he’d had in him. Noct’s magic seemed to sense the change and flung itself gladly onto Ignis, sparking around him and wrapping them up tight. 

Noct was already hard. He couldn’t help it, not that he wanted to, with drowning in Ignis’s taste and smell and the sheer fierce joy of being able to be with him again, even knowing it almost certainly wouldn’t happen again, that this exact combination of events allowing Ignis to throw off his duty in the quiet dark of Hammerhead wouldn’t come around twice. 

They hadn't knowingly had a last time. It had just been trading blowjobs in the shower that morning, hurrying because they'd been called to the palace as a matter of haste. It had been sweet and fun and affectionate but in retrospect it hadn't been nearly enough. They should have had time for their real last chance, privacy, but if this was what Noct could have he wasn't going to waste it, he wanted to take as much as he could possibly get. 

Ignis buried his face in Noct's throat and kissed him there. Noct could feel the desire in him to suck, leave a mark, the strain in Ignis's shoulders as Noct hung onto him to just do it, and even as he loved the unusual possessiveness he knew they couldn't, grabbed a hand through Ignis's hair and brought him up into a deep kiss instead, desperately committing to memory exactly how it felt to lean up into Ignis, pressed up together so tight like neither of them wanted any space between them at all, only enough for Ignis to work his hand between them.

It was wild, both of them greedy and raw, on a cliff edge between despair and desire. Ignis’s fist around both of their cocks was rough and fast, it was chilly and open and smelled a little of diner garbage, Ignis’s belt buckle jabbed into him where both of their pants were half-open and shoved hastily down just enough. None of it was good and all of it was perfect. 

The pleasure was an afterthought, although there was plenty of it, the thick clench of Ignis’s fingers stroking ecstasy like lightning spikes through him, the unusual place and the threat of discovery adding a piquancy. But mostly just the feeling of Ignis’s fingers sliding in his hair, the yearning thorough kissing as their mouths didn't part for as much as a second, the sweat on the nape of Ignis’s neck as Noct hung on and tried to get his fingers under Ignis’s shirt to skin. 

He didn't want to come, didn't want it to end, but he was overwrought with exhaustion and overwhelmed with emotion and he was so close to Ignis, so conscious this was really it, the last time, and when Ignis rubbed his thumb over the head of Noct’s cock in the exact way they’d learned together that Noct liked best, hours of excited, passionate trial and error back when they’d been new and dizzy with it, when Ignis whispered hoarsely, “Noct, love,” it was too much and he strangled his cry in Ignis’s mouth as he came. He felt Ignis trip over after him, read the shuddering of his body and the helpless squeeze of his hand effortlessly and intimately, and he closed his eyes and kissed back desperately and let pleasure crash over him, fleeting and impossible to imprint to memory, already gone and soaking into his muscles as twitching aftershocks when he tried. 

Ignis pulled away a little, slowly, came back in and held him when Noct’s legs couldn't take his weight. Noct put his arms back around Ignis and kissed him again, shaking, trying not to let misery fill back up all the places just washed clean by orgasm. He had to let go: he couldn't. 

“I'm sorry,” Ignis said, and if Noct had had any illusions from Ignis’s proper exterior that Ignis was taking this well, that Ignis didn't love Noct every bit as much as Noct loved him and was finding their abrupt ripping apart as impossible to bear, they were all shattered in that second, in the black agony of Ignis’s tone and the way he stroked Noct’s face. “I shouldn't have done that.”

“Don't,” Noct said, and he drew Ignis’s mouth back to his for another lingering, soft kiss before he went up on tiptoes to lean their foreheads together, closing his eyes. He knew Ignis was going to say it couldn’t happen again, and he even got why, but he couldn’t stand hearing Ignis apologise for being with him.

“It makes it harder,” Ignis said miserably. “Having you… when you still can't…”

“I know,” Noct said, his voice cracking with misery. Although it was devastating it was worth it to him, these moments he could have, but he could see how much that same equation was breaking Ignis into pieces.

“What were you doing?” Ignis said, as if finding refuge in the safe territory of explanations, things he could fix. 

“Nothing,” Noct said. Ignis let him go and started to do up his pants, his fingers trembling so badly Noct could see it in the dim golden light. Noct looked away and started to try to get himself back to rights as well, and that was the thing that brought stupid, furious tears to his eyes: usually they’d help each other with getting dressed again, after a quickie at home or a little making out break hidden away somewhere at official functions, giggling together and still exchanging affectionate kisses. Ignis not helping Noct made it feel as sad and sordid as a quick fuck behind a gas station really was.

Ignis gave him a doubtful look and Noct said, “I was looking at the stars. Like we used to.”

The last part fell out of a mouth pleasure-sodden and dull: he shouldn’t have said it, because it got him mingled sweetness and regret in Ignis’s eyes, a happy memory spoiled by reality. “Oh,” Ignis said. “Yes, a clear night sky out in this part of the world is very fine. Perhaps next time we camp we could make a point of taking in the view.”

“Sure,” Noct said, knowing he’d never bring it up, not if he couldn’t lie next to Ignis with their hands twined and snuggle up while they found star patterns and Ignis recited the stories of them he’d memorised years ago. “That’d be nice.”

***

There was something nice about criss-crossing the roads of Leide, comfortable. The sights quickly became familiar and as they cleared out sabertusks and the heavier, more difficult creatures for the hunts they got better at working as a team. And it was something _useful_ , like the tales Noct’s nanny had told him when he was a kid, of storybook princes with their quests and monsters, which had sounded really exciting and it had been a pretty big letdown when he’d got a little older and realised that most of the work of the King was managed across the Council table, with a shitload of homework to do first. He liked earning an honest crust. It made him feel normal. 

So flexing his combat skills was fun and even the long hours in the car were good. Noct enjoyed when the roof was up and he could sit on the back and feel the air on his face, but even more he liked when it rained and they were in their enclosed little cosy space, speeding through the gloom, Gladio reading and Prompto messing with his camera and taking shots of Ignis relaxed and focused on the road in the driver’s seat, or turning around to talk to Noct.

It felt like it could last as long as they wanted: like everything else would wait.

***

Noct crawled gratefully into the tent and faceplanted on Gladio’s bedroll, the first one he found, even though the edges of a book he didn't have the energy to move stuck into his stomach. His head kept spinning, but as he lay as still as he could with his eyes closed it started to calm a little, and his guts stopped turning over and over and threatening to spill his lunch. 

He wished he could take more medicine, but the one he'd taken down at the battle with the weird dualhorn was still squabbling with his magic in his veins as his birthright slugged awake and swelled again within him. He hadn't been this sick since his very first lessons warping: he'd learned to pace himself better, mainly, but the hard battle had panicked him enough to make him careless, forcing himself to higher warps, further, feeling the jolt of hanging for too short a time before he threw into another strike. 

It always felt like running away, seeing his friends little specks beneath him and nerve-wrackingly aware that they had no escape, no choice but to stay grounded and fighting for their lives, even while he knew replenishing his strength for magic was the best chance he could give them. That wasn't something he'd ever prepared for, training with Gladio first in the halls and then around the citadel and then the city. It had been a matter of pride, then, getting to the highest towers and hitting the furthest distance strikes, and then one time Gladio had said to him, _you know if we were in a real battle and it was too much, you should -_ and Noct had warped away, pretending to be caught up in the practice, before Gladio could finish off with some pretty words that amounted to _leave me to die for you_. 

After a few minutes he felt well enough to pull a cover over himself and curl up. It was Ignis’s bedroll, lightly scented with the expensive lavender fragrance he was still using in stubborn refusal of their rustic circumstances. Noct breathed it in deeply, feeling almost as comforted as when he rested on Ignis’s chest and smelled it on his warm skin, mingled with the spice and salt of sex. 

He dozed on and off, soaking in the reassurance and discomfort of his magic rising again within him. Outside he could hear Ignis preparing dinner, sounding in Noct’s dreamy state just like they were back in their apartment and Ignis was cooking in his well-stocked kitchen, not a camp stove in the open air. His mind seemed to catch onto the sounds, an anchor to steady the tossing of his stomach.

He was dimly aware when the background noise was joined by low talking, and then he caught his name. He opened his eyes and stared up at the green film of the tent, and listened.

“What are you _doing_?” Gladio was saying.

Ignis’s cooking sounds had taken on the tinny precision of irritation, and when he spoke his voice had the frost of being forced to respond to a question he considered beneath him. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“You damn well do know what I mean,” Gladio said.

Noct knew what he meant. He curled his knees to his chest and hugged them, seized by cold even though it was warm under his covers. Ignis said, “I can assure you.”

“Fine, play that way,” Gladio said, louder than he probably meant to be with exasperation. “Why are you coddling him on this? We should be on that boat by now. This driving around playing hunter ain’t doing anybody any good.”

“We’re doing a great deal of good for the people of this district,” Ignis said. Noct could smell what he was cooking, now, the rich sweet-sour mix of his favourite peppered sauce that Ignis had invented for him a couple of years ago, and the mouth-watering juiciness of dualhorn meat spitting on the grill.

“Yeah, fine, point taken,” Gladio said. “The people here were getting by fine without us and they’ll be fine when we’ve gone. We’ve got to _go_ , Iggy. Whole damn city’s relying on this treaty. You two got to face up to this.”

“I know,” Ignis said, or Noct thought he did, the words quieter than the rest of the conversation, and then he heard the clattering of Prompto whirling back into camp and throwing himself into a chair, a nice distraction from the shame and defiance that were replacing the nauseous hole in his belly where the overuse of magic had been. 

“Smells good!” Prompto said. “You guys fighting again?”

“We’re not fighting,” Ignis said. “Could you set the table, please, Prompto?”

“Sure thing. Where’s Noct?”

“Still resting,” Ignis said. “I’ll wake him when it’s ready to eat.”

Despite the instruction to Prompto dinner was another little while and Noct slipped back into light sleep. He dragged himself up through the grogginess when he heard the tent zipper, stretching, still enough in his dream world to give Ignis a drowsy smile, like he used to to try to tempt Ignis back into the cosy warm tumble of their bed in the morning. 

“You're awake,” Ignis said, pausing, and by all the lights of their lives now he should've left it there, told Noct dinner was ready and crawled back out of the tent and left Noct alone. 

He stayed, the breadth of his shoulders and the peak of his hair framed against the pale stream of the setting sun. The soft crease in his forehead was there that meant he’d been worried: it cleared as his gaze caressed Noct’s, dropped to his mouth, and Ignis moved inside and let the flap of the tent fall behind him.

“How are you feeling?” Ignis said. The only pain Noct was in was not being able to put his hands on Ignis, the sadness of recovering alone on the ground instead of in Ignis’s arms where he would’ve once, and he shook his head, silent. 

He’d waited too long to answer. Ignis frowned and reached for him and Noct fluttered his eyes closed and sighed as Ignis pressed the backs of his fingers to Noct’s face, at the side where he was pink and pillow-marked.

“Noct?” Ignis said. His voice was unsteady and Noct turned into the elegant warmth of his touch, recklessly, opened his mouth and licked and sucked at Ignis’s fingertips, feeling Ignis’s ragged gasp almost as much as he heard it, feeling the curve of Ignis’s knuckles with his tongue as Ignis knelt over him.

He wanted so desperately to pull Ignis down, his fingers twisting and clenching in the cool fabric of the sleeping bag with it. Ignis said it again, “ _Noct_ ,” smoky-sharp and almost afraid, and Noct grabbed his wrist, held him there with his wet fingers stroking against the arch of Noct’s cheek, feeling the tendons flex under his fingers, opened his eyes and looked up at Ignis and Ignis bent low and kissed him, hot and precarious and wonderful.

Noct moaned, helpless not to, and Ignis sat up straight again so fast it made Noct’s head spin, and Ignis’s too probably as he knocked the lantern hung from the central pole and sent it swinging.

“Are you okay?” Noct said, propping himself on his elbows and reaching up to rub it better. 

Ignis looked down at him, his eyes skating the shape of Noct’s body under the cover, and mumbled, “Dinner’s ready,” scarpering out of the tent so quick it was a miracle he didn’t pull the damn thing down with him, totally unlike his usual grace.

Noct flopped back down onto the ground and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes for a minute before he went to get up and join them outside. His headache was back.

***

Noct stumbled out of the motel in Longwythe and squinted up at the sun, a car leaning on the horn and swerving round him as he wandered into the road: he was totally in the wrong but he gave them the finger anyway. 

Prompto was hanging around by the diner entrance and greeted him cheerfully and Noct grunted something back, barely awake. It wasn’t much past seven and he was only up because everyone else’s pointed banging around while they washed up in the little bathroom and got dressed had got too loud to ignore.

Ignis was standing at the small trailer, looking over the produce and talking to the saleswoman. Noct took it in with a glance already skating on past and then slowed and looked again, longer. The woman was fairly plain, not at all like the very polished ladies around the palace or even the deliberate look Cindy had going on, but she was chatting back to Ignis about something and her liveliness made her pretty.

Noct had never been jealous. It just wasn’t something that had been part of them: he’d never thought about anyone else at all while he’d been with Ignis, even with the kind of formal functions where young women were thrown at him from every direction, it had felt like, and he’d never had any feeling at all from Ignis that he was anything other than completely focused on Noct. So it took him a minute to identify it, but it turned out it was an unpleasant thing to feel. And utterly unfair, given that Noct was the one who was engaged to someone else, but still: Ignis smiling and making conversation, a free and single man who could do whatever he wanted with whoever he wanted… it gave Noct an ugly twist inside his stomach.

It wasn’t fair of Noct either to feel better about the way Ignis turned to him and said, “Good morning,” as soon as Noct went over there, smiling at Noct as if the woman - as if anyone else even being alive - was totally forgotten, apart from Ignis then tried to interest Noct in some weird kind of local pepper she was selling. Apparently it was very versatile, or very nutritious, or both, and in any case Ignis carefully parted with fifty of their shiny gil and she put it in a paper bag for him and they waited until they’d moved halfway to the car and her attention had turned away before Noct made it disappear.

“Is that what you were talking to her about? Cooking?” Noct said, casually.

“No, actually,” Ignis said.

“Oh,” said Noct.

“I was asking her what she thought about the treaty,” Ignis said. He looked around them, at the sad dusty flatness of it all, and added, “This will all be Imperial territory, you realise. These people will become subjects of the Empire, no longer Crown Citizens of Lucis.”

“Yeah,” Noct said. He’d known that intellectually, but it seemed very different, when Ignis put it like that. Especially thinking that they were still really no more than a day or two drive out from the Crown City. Much less in a Nif battleship, of course. It wasn’t so much that the Empire would be on their doorstep as that they’d be pushing open the mailbox and peering inside.

“What does she think about it?” he asked, suddenly feeling kind of protective over the woman, and apologising mentally to her for being mean over her and Ignis, who she’d probably just seen as a walking city wallet, in his shiny shoes and black clothes and their flashy car. She was his, everyone around here was, in a way that was much less immediate and intense than the way Ignis or Gladio or Prompto were his, yeah, but no less real.

“She seemed unconcerned,” Ignis said, and sighed. “Or at least, she doesn’t expect her actual life will change much. The people here feel the Crown City abandoned them long ago.”

***

The restaurant and hotel at the beach were nothing in sophistication compared to the places Noct had grown up in, but after a couple of weeks of camping and caravans he’d picked up a new appreciation for the white-linen luxury of the marina. They went to bed early and Noct dreamt of fire and blood and black terror, his dad’s eyes closing as skeletal fingers reached for Noct and grasped creaking around his throat. He bolted up, fighting the sheets, gasping and afraid.

Gladio rumbled next to him, turning over, and Noct glanced at him and tore himself out of bed before he woke him. The nightmare was already fracturing away and he didn’t want to have to explain it to anyone, didn’t want to have to reclaim the memories before they left him. He fumbled at the sliding door onto the small terrace, got it open and stumbled out.

He was covered in clammy sweat and as it met cold air he started to shiver. The warmth of the room and his friends was appealing but he couldn’t stay still, crouched to trail his fingers through the calm warm lap of waves against the dock then got up to pace, trying to walk off the terror that was lingering even as the dream itself faded. His cheeks were wet and he wiped them, pressed the heels of his hands hard against his eyes, not understanding where this confusion and upset was coming from.

“Noct?” Ignis said behind him, softly, and Noct huddled into Ignis’s Crownsguard jacket when Ignis draped it over his shoulders. It was warm and smelled of the salt sea from the spray earlier while they’d waited with Noct while he fished, and Noct slipped his arms into the sleeves and pulled it tight around himself.

Ignis was familiar with his nightmares. From some things he’d said over the years Noct suspected he was even more familiar with them than Noct knew, that maybe Ignis had sat up with him through nightmares Noct himself didn’t remember, but they never talked about it, or what Noct had dreamt of. 

Ignis didn’t talk now, just stood with him, his warmth at Noct’s back, and Noct closed his eyes and took deep breaths of the fresh night air.

***

“This your idea of a joke?” Noct said, even though it wasn’t, of course it wasn’t, Ignis would never -

“I need you to calm down so I can explain,” Ignis said, reaching for him, and Noct fought in a breath and crowded into him, grabbing the paper out of Gladio’s hands.

“There was an attack. The Imperial Army has taken the Crown City,” Ignis said quietly, even as Noct read it for himself. One sentence seemed to stand out, even though when Noct blinked furiously he could see it was his mind playing tricks, that ‘King dead’ was written just the same as everything else. 

“No,” he said. “ _Wait_ , and we -”

“We couldn’t have known what was happening. What they were planning,” Ignis said. He was still staring at Noct, like he couldn't see anything else, his eyes wide with shock and tears. He tried to put his hand on Noct’s arm and Noct shied away from him: Ignis’s gloved hand fluttered in the air for a moment and then he stepped back and crossed his arms, only his hunched shoulders where he'd usually stand tall betraying his feelings. 

“I thought they were serious,” Noct said, but even as he said it and looked up at Ignis’s grave face, at Gladio’s open fury and shadowed grief, he realised he hadn't, not really. This wasn't a surprise. Not at all. 

Not to Noct, and not… he'd wondered why his dad had given Noct away so easily. And now Dad was dead, the city in war and ruins, and Noct was safe at the sea-edge of Leide. 

“I waited in the restaurant,” Ignis said, turning to Noct. He looked stiff and cold, until Noct met his gaze, bright with agony, and when Ignis reached for him this time he let Ignis rest a hand on his shoulder, felt him brush his finger against the soft skin on the side of Noct’s neck. Yesterday night that touch would have sparked everything in Noct alive and desperate, but now it felt as if it were happening to someone else. Magic rolled over in his stomach, roiling and watchful. “I heard it on the radio, too. People are talking about it. How can every report be wrong?”

“What else do we know?” Gladio snapped. Ignis broke his stare with Noct and shrugged, a tiny angry gesture, and Gladio said, “Then we can’t be sure.”

He sounded like a drowning man grabbing for the floating wood of the wreck around him. Noct thought of Iris, bouncing and shy as she’d been last time he’d seen her, and then, with creeping horror, he thought of Clarus. Dad’s shield, like Gladio was his, and if the Crown City was fallen, if Dad was dead… Clarus would have protected both with his last breath. There wasn’t even a question.

“It might not be safe for us there,” Ignis said.

“Might not be safe for us here!” Prompto said, turning to them, and Noct burned at the open fear on his face. Prompto hadn’t signed up for this, he wasn’t part of it the way Ignis and Gladio were, and the shadow of Niflheim that had dwelt over the three of them for much longer than the announcement of the treaty only now dimmed his brightness.

“Noct?” Ignis said, and they all faced him. Like… like he was their King: like this moment, when he needed them most of all to be his friends, was their furthest away from him. He wanted nothing more than to go to Ignis, step into his arms and hide his face and feel Ignis’s steadiness and love all around him, but he couldn’t see how.

“We go back,” he said quietly. Gladio nodded once, firmly, and Prompto passed a hand over his face.

“Very well,” Ignis said. He took a step forward and Noct hunched his shoulders and dropped his head. There was a moment and then Ignis said, “I’ll pack everything up. Gladio - we don’t know what we might face, nearer the City. If you could look to our supplies -”

“Yeah,” Gladio said. “C’mon, Prom.”

Noct almost wanted to call them all to stay with him. As if that could stop it: not just what was happening, but what’d already happened. As if it could change, be one of his dreams, and his dad still alive, and Insomnia safe. He’d thought there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t have done to be free of the burden of the throne, of the later crush of the wedding, and it only now struck him how selfish that was, how silly: he’d have made a thousand political marriages to see his city, his people, his family safe.

“Noct,” Ignis said as soon as they were alone, soft with anguish, and Noct blurted, “I’ll be back in a minute,” and threw himself out of the doors that opened directly onto the marina.

It was chilly outside, the wind howling unforgiving from a grey sky, throwing salt spray Noct could taste. There was an island in the near distance; looming and black with weird rocky horns, and Noct let his eyes fasten on it as he tried to get his breathing under control. His dad had told Noct stories, when he was a kid, about what Lucis had been like to travel through in the old days, the legends and lore of their lands, when he himself was young and his own father had held the Wall over all their territories, so Noct knew of the island off Galdin: Angelgard, Astral-blessed, the old sea-sanctuary of the Lucian kings. 

His dad, sitting on the side of his bed and talking him quietly down into sleep, maybe not every night, but _enough_ -

Noct gulped in air and opened the newspaper again, watching as the wind whipped at the flimsy pages, already shaking in his hands, quickly spattered with the light rain. 

The press in the Crown City was tightly controlled. Newspapers, radio, the internet: the palace managed it all through whispers and gentlemen’s agreements over brandies and occasionally, when it couldn't be avoided, pressure that turned out dull dark coals of stories. Even Noct rarely knew what was true and what was a glimmer of reality under layers of spin, seeing the artifice mainly when he opened a magazine cooing over what a fine young man the Crown Prince was, how handsome, how popular and loved.

Niflheim had the City now: the media would print from under the empire’s boot. Noct turned the page over. 

It took a moment for his eyes to resolve the grainy picture, and a minute to accept it. 

It showed the King. He lay on the floor of the entrance hall of the citadel, the Niflheim blade still upright in his back, blood pooled around him and smearing his face with the blank open eyes. 

Noct had imagined his father’s death many times. He'd always seen his dad in his bed, slipping away as the crystal took the last of his life for its own. He couldn't have imagined the violence of this, the horror; his mind shied away from it now and he found he was on his knees, trying to choke in the damp air, pages of the newspaper scattering onto the thrashing sea. 

Ignis pulled him up and into his arms and Noct rested his hot face on his chest, unable to cry, unable to do anything but watch the blue sparks of crystal magic behind his eyes, dancing higher and harder than it ever had for him as prince, as the bleak knowledge settled itself coldly into his blood and bones. 

“I'm so sorry,” Ignis whispered, sounding raw with grief and tenderness, and the only thing Noct wanted was to go back to bed with him, to pull the covers over them and lie in Ignis’s arms and pretend it was still weeks ago, that they were in Noct’s rooms at the citadel and were snatching another moment before getting up to go for dinner with his dad. In a moment Ignis would cradle Noct’s chin, and kiss his forehead, and then this would be real, and Noct would -

The citadel was gone; his father was gone. 

Noct pulled away before the tears could start. Ignis let him go, his face a picture of careful concern. Noct tried to force his own expression into a regal calm and after a second Ignis’s face smoothed out too, mirroring and then modelling Noct’s attempt to get himself together. 

“We should find the others,” Noct said. Ignis followed as he retreated back through the hotel room and outside to the car, the royal aide’s perfect half-step behind. 

***

They'd run up to the hunter’s outpost north of Hammerhead once or twice over the last few couple of weeks, just another scratched-out little settlement, but today Noct felt a thrumming haze hanging over it as they approached, the heavy anticipation like the moon creeping across the sun and bringing night when it should have been day: the magic in Noct’s blood calling out to the royal arms Monica had said were hidden nearby. It made Noct fidget in the backseat, not sure whether he wanted to leap out and run all the way there, or go far, far away. 

Ignis said, “All right, Noct?”

Noct met his gaze in the rear view mirror. He put his hands in his lap, folding them the way he used to when he’d convinced Ignis to let Noct try his coffee and was pretending he’d loved it rather than that it had wired him up to hell and he thought his heart might fall right out of his chest. He said, “Yeah, I'm fine.”

He'd never asked his dad about the spinning armiger weapons that shielded the King of Lucis in a silvery blur or flew out from an outflung hand to make his enemies bleed. Not what they were, or how Dad had got them, or how Noct was supposed to get his own. He hadn't wanted to know; he'd assumed the time would come. 

Ignis had the directions Cid had written down for them but Noct led the way without having to think much about it, the flaring temptation of power up ahead mixing with steel-cold dread that weighed down his boots. Gladio followed behind him so close it was irritating; Prompto tried to do the same and Noct hunched up his shoulders to his ears and trudged on, distantly sorry and glad together when Ignis caught up to them and drew Prompto away, although he could feel the heaviness of Ignis’s gaze on the back of his neck.

The tomb was low to the ground and yellowed with age even in the golden glow of the desert. It was weird to think that Noct’s ancestor had chosen to build his tomb what must have seemed close to the Lucian stronghold, the citadel and the crystal, and now here Noct was, outside the city that was all he’d really known, surrounded by dusty reminders of the fallen pride of their kingdom. It made him feel very small, utterly unworthy of the responsibility that had crashed onto his shoulders, and he took a deep breath and waited for his friends to catch up before he stepped towards the door. 

Ignis was the one to greet Cor. Noct’s attention was too caught by the statue, imposing in repose, by the sword lying on its breast. Here, the glory of Lucis seemed close, still real, although maybe only to Noct, the weapon calling to him now so clear and loud he could almost hear words, like his ancestor was with them. Maybe he was: the sword shone, as real and alive as the blade his dad had worn at his hip all his life. That had been the first blade Noct ever wielded, as a big-eyed and careful kid, only half-understanding the connection between the Lucis line and their arms, only knowing that holding it had made him feel strong and safe, like any time he was with his dad. He’d been so proud when Dad had put his very own sword in his hands on his sixteenth birthday, although he'd been kind of an asshole about it at the time. 

There would be no tomb for Regis Lucis Caelum. Noct would never see his father’s sword again. 

“Your Highness,” Cor said, his gaze flattening onto Noct. 

Noct shook his head, automatically, not even sure himself whether it was confusion or denial. “Highness? There’s no _kingdom_ any more.” He could see Ignis’s distress in the corner of his eye, like Ignis hadn’t even considered that, but Noct couldn’t think of anything else. 

What was he supposed to be king of? All he’d surveyed, a city aflame and even now with Imperial dreadnoughts crushing their own landing spots? Or the forgotten hinterlands of Leide, who’d concluded long ago their monarch wasn’t for them? “You want to tell me what I’m here for?” he said, harshly, but he couldn’t help his gaze being dragged back and back to the tomb. The insistent whispering was becoming a roar, like being out in a strong wind. Gladio put a hand on his shoulder: Noct hadn’t even realised he’d been swaying.

Cor was looking at all of Noct’s friends in turn, slow and thoughtful. Prompto fidgeted next to Noct and Noct shook Gladio off, gesturing him to see to Prompto instead. Gladio lingered for another moment, but Noct refused to look at him and Gladio went to stand with Prompto instead, letting Prompto edge behind him a little bit. He didn’t know Cor well, but then hardly anyone did; Ignis knew him best of Noct’s friends, had done specialised training with him in his role as future chief strategist to the kingdom, and Noct had teased Ignis for ages about Ignis’s crush on him, but the Marshal invited confidence, not confidences.

Cor said, “The power of Lucis, passed from the old to the new through the bonding of souls. This is called the Sword of the Wise.”

“The Old Wall,” Ignis said quietly.

Cor nodded. “The King who wielded this sword built the first wall to defend the kingdom. It rose again on the Niflheim attack, Prince Noctis; it protected your people. This was the first royal blade your father took, too.”

“Protection,” Noct said. He stepped forward, almost put out his hand but bitterness and guilt overflowed instead and he added, “He took this, but he didn’t learn from it. He chose to protect one prince instead.”

“The King entrusted the role of protector to you -” Cor said, frustration breaking over his voice, stepping forward in a way that made Noct have to deliberately hold his ground.

“Entrusted it to me?” he said, hearing his own voice rising and cracking, not caring. “Then why didn’t he _tell_ me that? Why did he stand there smiling as I left -”

He smacked his hand onto the tomb and it echoed. His hand hurt, first a small dull ache of impact, and then the familiar electric spark of Lucian power, and Noct’s grip tightened as it went from being something he’d done just to _feel_ to something he needed to stay upright. His tears smeared the granite of the tomb as the desolation and inevitability of what Cor was saying pierced him. His dad was gone, and Noct didn’t know if he could be the man his father had intended to leave behind him to carry on.

Cor came closer to him then, and there was nothing in him now that Noct needed to shy from. “He didn’t want you to remember him as the King, that day. In the time you had left, he wanted to be your father. He always had faith in you, that you would do what you needed to for the sake of your people.”

Noct took in a wet shuddering breath and then Ignis was there. He wasn’t touching Noct, but Noct could feel him, just behind Noct’s shoulder, the warmth and steadiness Ignis had been bringing to Noct’s life as long as Noct could remember.

Noct hadn’t lost everything. There were still people who had hopes for him; there were still people he could let down.

“I guess he left me no choice,” he said softly. He knew what he needed to do, to take the sword, had known as soon as he walked into the tomb, like blood and steel calling to their own; he hoped to hell it was going to come with some of that wisdom as well.

He stretched out his hand and the blade answered.

It was beautiful, more than he ever would have expected. He'd seen his dad’s armiger lots of times but this sword was shining and spinning silver and _his_ , in some arcane way he couldn't have explained, but as the rest of the tomb disappeared in its ferocious glow he fell into it, still reaching for the blade the way he reached for his own attuned weapons, with the sparking extra sense of his magic.

The sword hung in the air in front of him for a moment, and then it turned over and aimed and Noct cried out as it flung itself into him. He went to one knee, shuddering, trying to breathe through it; not pain, not really, but heat and sensation like it was a star inside of him, and Noct blinked away the exploding lights behind his eyes and looked up at his ancestor.

It didn’t even look like a person. It - he - looked like armour, menacing and inhuman, but there was enough of a personality inside it that Noct could feel himself being looked at; seen; judged.

“You are Lucis,” it said, flatly, in a voice that Noct knew with absolute certainty was simultaneously in his head, and echoing round him, loud in the tomb. The dead king didn’t seem to know where he was, or maybe didn’t care: he didn’t so much as glance at the sarcophagus. 

Noct’s eyes burned and he strangled out, “Yeah.”

It didn’t bother to say anything else. A nod and it was gone, the eerie white light blinking out from the tomb and leaving just a tiny flickering flame inside Noct. He could feel the sword there, _inside_ and not just suspended in the arsenal like everything else, and he was kneeling on the floor, cold soaking into his knees, aching.

He was cupping one hand against his chest. He could feel his heart beating, slow and hard, just where the sword had gone in.

“Noct!” Ignis knelt next to him and put his arms around him and Ignis’s hand covered his: Ignis was trembling. Ignis touching him like this in front of everyone, especially Cor, was weird, but Noct needed it, badly. He closed his eyes and rested against Ignis gratefully.

“Did you see him?” he mumbled.

“You just fell,” Ignis said, his voice taut.

“Oh,” Noct said, vaguely, feeling jangly with nerves and tiredness. He sighed and turned into Ignis a little more and was pleasantly shocked when Ignis hid his face in Noct’s throat, for a moment so brief he was almost sure he’d imagined it. Like, maybe - had he imagined the ghost King?

He could still feel the new blade. It felt almost aware, like it was waiting for Noct to use it; waiting for Noct to bring it companions. He had a visceral, frightening flash of a vision of the armiger circling a human heart, and leaned against Ignis to scramble up. He wanted outside, wanted air and sky and his dad’s car rumbling under his ass.

He shook out his shoulders when he stood up, Ignis sticking close, and Gladio crowded in protectively from his other side. Prompto was hovering, looking a little guilty; Noct spotted the camera in his hand and rolled his eyes at him and Prompto smiled.

Cor was looking solemn, and relieved enough Noct was a bit offended. He said quietly, “The power of kings goes with you, your Majesty.”

***

They crept back to the outpost, a batch of thunderocs divebombing them most of the way. Usually Noct took point for anything aerial, warping up to them until they were down and Gladio could get in there with his greatsword, but today he was assailed with the dual struggle of the new blade inside him shivering with anticipation to be used, and a head so dizzy and tummy so rolling that he completely misdirected his first strike, dropped flailing out of the sky, and Cor ordered him back to the ground. Prompto brought them down with his gun for Gladio to finish off, instead, gabbering with pride when Cor told him he'd done well. 

Noct slunk onto a rock and sat there, Ignis’s hand on the back of his neck pretty much all that was keeping him upright, concentrating on the slow sweep of Ignis’s thumb on his nape and not anything else. It was unusual for Ignis not to throw himself into a fight with deadly, elegant intent, but Noct wasn't going to argue if Ignis wanted to stay by him. The guys had it covered. 

He managed to get back to the outpost without abandoning all dignity and begging Gladio for a piggyback, at least. There were whispers and outright stares from the smattering of people around, but not at Noct. Cor the Immortal was clearly far more famous in these parts than some dumb prince. Someone bold - one of the hunters, Noct thought, pretty sure he'd seen her arguing with Takka over a bounty at some point - even approached, and Cor fell behind to talk to her while Ignis shepherded Noct to the caravan a little ways out from the heart of the post, and inside. 

“Rest a while,” Ignis said softly and Noct murmured something nonsensical back, eyes slipping closed for Ignis’s fingers rubbing tenderly at the stabbing pain between his eyebrows, and snuggled under the blanket Ignis pulled up over his shoulders. 

***

It was quiet and night-time and he was tired, but he couldn't sleep. The blade loomed within him and every time he shut his eyes he was hit with nauseating images of the greyed-out photograph of his father’s corpse and the sight of Nif ships haunting over his city, over the soaring silver walls of his home, until they mixed and swam in the black behind his eyes and dreadnoughts fired on his father’s bowed head and the towers of the citadel blurred into the shape of his father’s sword.

The door of the caravan opened, smoothly and almost silently, and Noct pushed himself up on his elbows and snapped, “Yeah?”

“Apologies,” Ignis said, starting to withdraw before Noct could even see him, the door closing again.

“No!” Noct said. He sat up and banged his head on the bedframe above him and dropped his blanket on the floor as he tried to kick out of it. “ _Shit_. Ignis! It’s okay. I just didn’t know who it was.”

The door opened again and Ignis stepped inside. He looked almost-perfect: probably Noct was the only one who’d catch that his silk Crownsguard shirt was a little creased, and his hair was starting to droop, and his glasses were the tiniest bit crooked on his nose. Ignis stood and contemplated Noct silently and Noct squashed his own bedhead down and said, “Is that for me?”

“Indeed,” Ignis said. He could have just come and put the travel mug on the little cabinet that served as a night table, but he came and sat by Noct instead, rounding his shoulders to fit into the little warm cave of Noct’s bunk. “It’s chicken noodle. I thought it might be easier on your stomach.”

“Thanks,” Noct said. He hadn’t even said his stomach was bad, but trust Ignis to notice. Chicken noodle soup sounded great. He was suddenly starving, his belly feeling black-hole empty, and he reached for it greedily. He added, “What time is it?”

“Late,” Ignis said. “Gladio and Prompto have… that is to say, we’ve set up camp, on the haven just over the road. We thought, perhaps. You’d prefer to be alone.”

Noct stared into his soup, stirred it a little. It was heavy on the chicken, creamy rather than brothy, hardly any pepper and the noodles a bit overcooked, just the way he liked it, even though Ignis considered overdoing noodles offensive to his pride as a chef. “No,” he said quietly, breathed it, and Ignis took a raggedy breath of his own before he reached down and started to take off his shoes, cautiously, like he thought he might have heard wrong, or Noct might change his mind.

Noct didn’t. Couldn’t, wouldn’t; the only thing he wanted was to lean up against Ignis again, Ignis’s arm around him and the camp-cold tip of Ignis’s nose nudging Noct’s head as Ignis pressed his face into Noct’s hair and Noct slurped up his soup, thinking of nothing but the moment he was in, a precious moment of peace.

Ignis took the mug away from him when he was done, put it down on the floor, and from there Noct pulled him smoothly across and down, lay back down facing the wall of the caravan and got Ignis behind him, little-spooning into Ignis’s arms as they curled up together. Ignis found the blanket and pulled it over them and then Noct captured his hand and pulled it over his waist, twined their fingers together on his stomach, which was full and easy now. There was starlight coming into the caravan now, a bright full moon, but here in the bottom bunk it was private and dark and still. He didn’t realise he was crying again, steadily, until he realised the lumpy pillow under his cheek was spreading with damp.

Ignis was crying too, Noct thought, his breath hitching and wet, and Noct pressed back into him and held on tight. He didn’t even know what he was crying for: the enormity of it kept hitting him, over and over again, in tiny vivid bits like puzzle pieces building a picture of their loss. Noct’s second grade teacher, who’d been everyone’s motherly favourite and retired when Noct finished her class; Retra and Sakorin who Noct had worked with at the deli, never quite becoming friends but sharing companionable irritation over their cringey unreasonable boss and the crinkly yellow uniform shirts; the serenity of the public park Dad had opened in Noct’s mom’s honour, with her favourite colourful flowers and a tree he and Dad had planted together to grow up with Noct. 

Remembering the city was gone, over and over, took up so much of the mental space he had he genuinely thought maybe he’d forget to breathe; kind of wanted to; maybe he could just go to sleep tonight and never wake up and he’d never have to deal with any of this. Never feel the crush of the weight of this sadness, never think about what was gone, never be King.

He shifted, shivering, and Ignis roused behind him, pulled the blanket over them tighter and said, “Noct?”

It was quiet enough for Noct to ignore, if he wanted. To pretend he hadn’t heard, or was sleeping, and he squeezed his eyes shut and blurted, “He died with me thinking he’d screwed me over.” He couldn’t stop his voice cracking, as if the misery in him was too much to stay inside, like the girl in the story who was cursed by the Astrals and poured flowers from her mouth whenever she tried to speak. “When we said goodbye, I was thinking… and he _knew_.”

“Oh, Noct,” Ignis said. He rustled behind Noct and then he was leaning up and Noct glanced back and up at him and turned into Ignis’s delicate, understanding fingertips on his cheek, needing it more than anything: Ignis’s good opinion was the only one that had ever counted more than his father’s and his touch felt like absolution. “Yes, those last few days were difficult. But I don’t believe your father ever doubted your love and respect for him.”

Noct rolled onto his back and pulled Ignis down, desperately. He was off target, first, and then Ignis moved with him and they were kissing. Everything in Noct went blissfully quiet, the softness of Ignis’s mouth moving on his the only thing that mattered.

It only lasted a few moments. Then it flooded back, worse, Noct feeling _guilty_ , of all things, like it was betraying his dad and his city and everyone by trying to escape for a few minutes, and then that made him feel bad for trying to use Ignis like that, even though Noct had wanted to kiss him the whole time they were out here, always wanted to kiss Ignis. He pulled away and muttered, “Sorry.”

“Do you want me to go?” Ignis said, subdued. They hadn’t even kissed long enough for his glasses to go askew and Noct felt terrible, but he grabbed at Ignis anyway when Ignis went to move away.

“No,” he said, turned and nuzzled in, seeking just the warm animal comfort of having Ignis close, and Ignis dropped back to his side, threw his leg over one of Noct’s like he understood. He rested a hand on Noct’s chest, tentative, and Noct wriggled under him, couldn’t help a brief grimace as Ignis’s hand covered the ache where he’d absorbed the sword.

“It’s sore?” Ignis said, damn his memory for detail, and Noct moved his arms obediently so Ignis could pull his t-shirt up. He hadn’t even checked himself, he didn’t want to see: he could still feel it inside him, that was enough. He didn’t want this, he didn’t want this thing that marked him irreparably now as different; he had to bear it, but he didn’t have to acknowledge it.

His own familiar magic sparked welcomingly around Ignis’s fingers as Ignis touched skin. That was good, comfortable, and Noct was caught by the way Ignis smiled, just an involuntary little flicker, when he felt it.

That was wiped off his face as soon as he looked down at Noct’s half-bare chest, his t-shirt rucked up around his collarbone. Noct craned down and he could just about see it.

The mark was red and bruising, more like Noct had been hit with a blunt bat than stabbed, but it didn’t really hurt. He hated the expression on Ignis’s face, that he couldn’t read it, just glittering eyes and tight lips, his face as stern and set as it got just before they dove into battle. He’d seen how Ignis used to look at his dad sometimes, sitting in the corner while Noct trained with him, the wary coldness of the way he’d watch the armiger circle the King, like maybe if Ignis just read enough books and reports he could figure out how it worked. Not in a jealous way: Noct had never got the impression Ignis wanted that for himself. More that he’d thought maybe Regis shouldn’t have it, either.

“It’s still me,” Noct said anxiously. “Don’t… you don’t have to be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Ignis said. His eyes were still fixed on the mark but he felt for Noct, urgently, twined their fingers. “I’m afraid _for_ you, Noct. You don’t know how it looked - when it went into you -”

He took in a breath and Noct rolled onto him this time, slid his arms under Ignis’s shoulders and buried his face in Ignis’s neck, and Ignis clung back.

***

Noct had slept, finally, with Ignis’s arms around him, but he’d dreamt, too.

“Morning,” Ignis said, blearily, raising his head from the pillow and resting it on Noct’s shoulder instead with a groan. Noct felt a smile twitch at his lips, echoing a contentment that he treasured more for knowing the abyss of grief was still behind it. But this moment was still good, still right: since they’d been on the roadtrip Ignis had been getting up before him, already had his cup of coffee and was perfectly dressed and prepared for the day by the time Noct woke. This soft, drowsy version of him, the two of them lazing together in bed, was Noct’s favourite, Ignis letting Noct see something nobody else got to.

“Morning,” he said. He didn’t want to say the next bit, but the armiger inside him was almost vibrating with it, clamouring for more strength, making it feel as if the words were pushed out of him. “I know where the next one is.”

***

It wasn’t the first Nifs Noct had taken out: that had been the small troop holding the way up to the overlook, yesterday, but it was the first ones where he really knew what they’d done to his city, his people. 

He felt savage, and he let himself be savage, feeling and seeing his friends just as rampant around him. Every time they called their weapons it fed the fire of vengeance in his belly. He could feel the gladness of the sword within him, like the soul of that long-dead ancestor urging him on, even when it was the engine blade cutting swathes through the MTs and the one tech walker. That was new but it was nothing, not to how Noct felt: he danced in the air in front of it, threw ice magic to freeze it where it stepped, and even when the explosion burned the air around him he didn’t move until Ignis pulled him away, needing to see the thing’s death throes up close.

“Huh,” Prompto said uncertainly, when they were done, and scrambling back together, still checking around themselves for any stragglers. “This is pretty… wow.”

It did look destructive. The hunts they’d done had usually been one big animal or a bunch of small ones, and the carcasses had been kind of gross, but they’d felt natural. There was a chemical-smelling wrongness to the fallen Nif troops, alien in the ruins of Keycatrich. For a moment, Noct saw the landscape his dad must have seen, in his own war: Nif death polluting his homelands, and he hated the empire with a moment of pure revulsion and rage, even more than when he’d seen the picture of his father lying dead.

“Yeah,” he said. “Come on.”

***

The sun was already low in the sky by the time they trudged out of the trench. Thank the gods, the Nifs either hadn’t realised their troops had been destroyed or hadn’t cared. The bodies of the ones they’d wrecked before were still there; maybe in thirty years time someone would come through here and wonder about them, the way Noct had about the detritus over the rest of Leide. 

“Not camping _again_ ,” Prompto wailed when they broke back out to the outpost and Gladio tried to lead them over to the haven, flopping down in the middle of the road and refusing to move. “Come on! We were down there for days! Can we go to the motel, please? I wanna shower!”

“Another night camping won’t harm you,” Gladio snapped, although he looked less annoyed when he clapped eyes on Noct under the barren glare of the outpost’s lights. Sitting down next to Prompto and just going to sleep right there on the dirt road sounded pretty good to Noct, but a bath and a real bed sounded better.

It was an hour to Longwythe though, and none of them had slept in over twenty-four hours. And it’d be coming on for night, soon: Ignis flat-out refused to drive in the dark since Noct had run into that iron giant out by Hammerhead, and although Noct would sometimes take the wheel himself if he really wanted to get somewhere he didn’t think he should be in charge of a car right now.

“Specs?” he said.

Ignis looked at the horizon, measuringly, then over at Noct.

“Please, Iggy?” Prompto said. He scrambled up and bounded over and Noct found himself being pulled in by the throat while Prompto squished his face in an illustrative manner. “Look how terrible Noct looks! He needs a motel too.”

“Very well,” Ignis said.

“It’s nearly dark,” Gladio said, scowling. Noct didn’t know what had crawled up his ass and died: maybe he was still mad about Cor.

Ignis flicked him a glance and said, “We can make it.”

***

Noct collapsed onto the first bed he came to, his head killing him. As soon as he was lying down everything down to his bones started to ache and complain. He’d wanted to wash up before bed, at least, but if he moved he was going to be sick again, or die, or be sick again and then die. He found the coolest spot he could on the musty-smelling pillow and closed his eyes.

***

Noct woke in the middle of the night. He felt grubby and groggy, like the worst hangover he'd ever had, and that was unpleasant, but Ignis was asleep in bed beside him again, and that was nice. 

There hadn't been much choice about pairing up so far on the trip - Noct and Ignis had been out of the question and Ignis and Gladio were both too big to be able to share one of the narrow motel doubles, so Noct had been stuck with Gladio, who was giant and kicky and snored. Ignis slept neatly, on his back, his face unlined and peaceful without his glasses, and Noct inched up to him and put his head on Ignis’s chest. 

The main sign of Ignis stirring was the same as it always was when Noct got up on him like this, a deep breath under Noct’s cheek and Ignis bringing up to a hand to muzzily stroke Noct’s head in his sleep. Ignis was wearing just a t-shirt and, Noct found when he slid his palm inquisitively over Ignis’s waist, his underwear, the tight, silky boxer-briefs he preferred.

Ignis's hand in his hair took on a more purposeful bent and Ignis said quietly, “Noct?”

“Yeah,” Noct said. 

“How are you feeling?”

“Bad,” Noct admitted. It was good to have physical aches and pains to focus on, though. It was a distraction from the grey mist that was always waiting to come over him now, thoughts of everything that was changed, everything that was gone. 

“You need to eat,” Ignis said. Noct did want to eat but he wanted to keep touching Ignis more and he grumbled as Ignis shifted him gently back to the mattress and got out of bed. “And wash. It's quite a nice bathroom, I'll run you a bath.”

“You don't have to,” Noct said, not very convincingly: having a bath and then food made for him sounded good. 

“I'd rather,” Ignis said, disappearing out of the bedroom door. “I'm afraid you do smell.”

***

He rolled himself out of bed and slouched into the bathroom. The tiles were a horrible shade of green and the towels weren’t fluffy enough, but it was clean and the bathtub was big, and Ignis had found bathsalts somewhere: it smelled medicinal in a way that got Noct’s shoulders down from around his ears before he’d even got into the steaming water, used to it from after training growing up.

He dropped his clothes on the floor and climbed in, sighing as he relaxed into the warm cradle of the water, even the sting of it against his scrapes from the trench feeling good. He’d last had a long hot shower when they were at the hotel at Galdin. Not so long ago but it felt like months.

He made a desultory effort at washing himself, but mainly he just floated, staring up at the condensation-covered ceiling and tracing shapes out of the cracks. It was restful.

There was a light tap on the door and Ignis came in. He put folded pajamas on the toilet - Noct didn’t even think he’d had any clean stuff to wear to bed, never mind pajamas, but Ignis had ways - and said, “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” Noct said lazily.

Ignis hummed in response and came closer. The room was dim and humid, Ignis’s glasses already starting to steam up lightly, and Noct was very aware that he was nude with not much beyond a few bubbles to hide his reaction to the shape of Ignis in his tight t-shirt and underwear, his broad shoulders and long legs and the thick bulge of his cock. A slow thrumming ache started in his own belly, making him want to spread his legs but the tub was too narrow for that much movement. He arched his back a little instead, cupped water in his hands and splashed his face.

“Wash my hair?” he said.

Ignis sat on the edge of the bath and Noct’s eyes went heavy-lidded as he caught a droplet of water on Noct’s cheek, brought his thumb to his mouth and licked it off contemplatively. “I’ll get wet,” he said.

“You could take your shirt off,” Noct suggested. His voice wanted to be low and smoky, and he let it; his gaze wanted to gorge on Ignis as he half-smiled and stood up and stripped his t-shirt over his head, and Noct let himself do that, too.

The shampoo was the motel’s, thin and smelling exactly the same as the chemical-pine car fresheners Cindy sold at the service station, but Ignis washed Noct’s hair with the same care as if it was the stupidly expensive stuff he’d used at home. He massaged Noct’s head slowly, clever careful fingers moving over Noct’s scalp, and then rubbed Noct’s temples until Noct groaned and slid down in the bath, the head of his erection peeking out of the water, his headache gone and even the memory of it fading, the absence of pain registering as shattering relief. 

“Your toast will be getting cool,” Ignis said eventually, reluctantly, and Noct struggled to open his eyes. The water was still lukewarm but he felt immediately cold, as soon as Ignis stepped away. 

“I’ll be there in a minute,” he said. He stood up, water dripping back into the bathwater lapping around his calves as it started to drain, unashamed of the stiff length of his cock, the head a little pinker than usual with the heat of the water and already glossy. Ignis met his gaze and then his eyes dropped to Noct’s cock, deliberately and brazenly. Noct almost moaned again at the flush working its way down and highlighting the muscles of Ignis’s chest like he was a presentation on the perfection of the human body. He took the towel Ignis handed him and let his gaze wander in turn, lingering with satisfaction on the evidence of Ignis’s own desire, his cock fully hard, the vivid shape of it in Ignis’s underwear somehow offering more temptation than Noct’s nakedness.

He dried himself quickly and put on the pajamas, then went back through to the small breakfast bar that separated the galley kitchen from the living space. Ignis had only turned on one light, over the stove, and everywhere was velvet-dark and still. The cover of night, the familiarity of sleepiness and possessiveness and the smooth expanse of Ignis’s naked back made Noct brave, or stupid, or both, and he did just what he would’ve done weeks ago, in their kitchen in their apartment in their own city: slinked up behind Ignis and slid his arms around Ignis’s waist and buried his face in the gorgeous dip between the flex of Ignis’s shoulderblades as he stirred scrambled eggs.

He felt Ignis’s hesitation, and clung tighter; and then he felt Ignis’s long breath out, his tension turning liquid. Ignis slipped one hand to cover Noct’s at his hip and Noct tangled their fingers, opened his mouth against Ignis’s back and sucked a pink mark there to match the one Noct had on his front from the royal blades.

***

He was the one to get up from the table when he’d eaten and lead Ignis back to bed. Noct had kept his hands to himself during, and he wished he hadn’t: mental exhaustion had crawled back in while he ate, instead of the purer physical exhaustion of when he’d let the bath and the wanting make him occupy his body completely. Dawn was starting to touch the windows outside and with the light of day came guilt, loss bleaching Noct inside like sun bleached bone. It had been easier when it was just him, and Ignis, and pretending none of it had happened.

“I can stay on the couch if you prefer,” Ignis said, lingering in the doorway. “I slept well before, it would be fine.”

Noct shook his head. He was going for dignified, mature - he was going to point out that Ignis needed sleep as much as any of them, and they might as well all take advantage of proper beds while they had them, and and and, but what happened when he opened his mouth was, “Don’t leave me -”

And Ignis’s face crumpled and Noct’s vision blurred and he was pushing Ignis back against the doorframe to kiss him, hopeless and desperate; without Ignis he was nothing, and he couldn’t bear another night apart.

The pajamas were loose anyway but Ignis stripped Noct down like they'd offended him. Noct tripped over the trailing legs on the way to the bed, locked in deep kissing, running his hands restlessly over Ignis’s shoulders and back and hips, trying to shove his tight underwear over the curve of his ass. Ignis groaned into his mouth and picked him up adeptly out of the near-fall, dropped them both down onto the bed so they barely lost contact. Noct's head swam with it, how good it was to be surrounded by Ignis, pressed down as much by the weight of how much he'd been needing this as he was by Ignis on top of him. 

It was almost unbearably slow, moving against one another in uneven rolls of their hips, clutching kisses that Noct kept having to break off so he could pant against Ignis’s mouth. It felt new and that wasn’t what Noct wanted, he wanted comforting ordinary habit, the messy easy sex they were used to, with nothing hanging over them but the alarm set for seven the next morning.

Ignis left sloppy kisses along his cheekbone and rested his forehead there, breathing hard. His cock was hard and wet against Noct’s hip and Noct reached down to take it into his hand, rubbing his thumb over the head, letting muscle memory make it filthy and good so Ignis moaned into his ear. He ran his other hand through Ignis’s hair, over and over again until it was falling in a long soft fringe that tickled against the sword callouses on his palm. His own cock ached and jerked against the hard muscle of Ignis’s stomach and Noct flipped them onto their sides, hooking his leg shamelessly over Ignis’s thigh and pressing their groins in close, feeling the drips of water still on his skin turning seamlessly to glistening sweat in the warm dark sanctuary of being alone together in bed.

“I missed this,” he said, meaning so much more than he could figure out how to say: Ignis’s smile that grew under Noct’s fingertips and blended into Noct’s mouth, the transition of hairy taut thigh into the sensitive crease of Ignis’s ass, magic arching between them solstice-fireworks bright and hot, the way pleasure wound up his spine when Ignis tipped his head back and gasped for Noct’s hand stroking him and electric-struck down Noct’s belly when he rocked their cocks together. Noct had shaped his life around those things, had told time off the shadow Ignis cast on the plains of royal life.

“Oh, Noct,” Ignis murmured and _yes_ that was what Noct needed, what he'd wanted, Ignis taking his mouth at just the right moment to muffle the sound Noct made, the sound he always made when Ignis wrapped his fist around Noct's cock in turn and nudged up right _there_ with the ridge of his nail, practiced and sweet, the only person Noct had ever been with like this, the only one he could imagine being with. He thrust into Ignis’s hand and swept his thumb over the head of Ignis’s cock and let himself tumble after Ignis into orgasm. 

They didn't need words, after. He curled into Ignis’s side and pulled Ignis’s arm over his back, and sleep came peaceful and dreamless. 

***

Noct took a long time to wake up, enjoying it. It must have been late morning at least, the room bright even from behind his eyelids, and he sighed and stretched into the warm pool of light on the bed as he floated gently out of sleep. 

“Morning,” he said and nudged up against Ignis.

“Afternoon,” Ignis corrected, with a shade of his disapproving citadel-voice, but when Noct tugged at him he came, setting aside the tablet he was working on and opening his mouth against Noct’s in a lingering, sweet kiss. Ignis was fully dressed, legs long in his grey trousers and looking fair and touchable in his white t-shirt, and it filled Noct with a tender comfort to think that Ignis had chosen to stay here in the room with him throughout the day, that Ignis hadn’t wanted Noct to wake alone.

“How are you feeling?” Ignis said.

“Better,” Noct said complacently. Just five minutes, at the start of a new day: he just wanted that long, before he let everything back in, before he had to think about it. He buried his face against Ignis’s hip and Ignis took a deep breath and sank his fingers into Noct’s hair, which Noct could already feel was flyaway and tangled since he’d slept on it wet. It felt like an okay sacrifice, although he might feel differently in front of the mirror later on.

There was a slight magical haze in the room, an energy Noct could feel more than he could see. When he focused on it he could sense the source, Ignis drawing on Noct’s magic and reaching for his weapons, over and over again without pulling any of them into reality, restless. 

“All right?” he said, and put his arm over Ignis’s stomach, rucking up Ignis’s shirt just a little to find the warm skin under his waistband, running his fingers over the hard cut of muscle there. He wanted Ignis again, but Ignis had never really been into daytime sex. Work time was sacrosanct in Ignis’s mind and Noct had never been able to break him of that even as they’d blurred the lines between professional and personal into nothing. 

“Fine, fine,” Ignis said. “I’ve been doing some of my own research, trying to see if I can find any further information about the tombs. But it seems we may have to rely on your… hunches.”

He sounded frustrated. “You slacker,” Noct said. He sat up and pushed his arms up over his head, feeling his back pop. When he looked back around Ignis’s eyes were on him, intent and bright, and Noct leaned back in for a tight hug. Ignis cradled his head and Noct closed his eyes and opened himself up to the feeling of missing his dad, clutching on to the last bit of home he had.

***

Ignis had disappeared by the time Noct was ready, probably out shopping for basics for medicines. Noct didn’t keep track of numbers the way Ignis did, but Prompto had been knocking the elixirs back in the trench like they really were just energy drinks, so Ignis would be wanting to stock up. He could already see how things like that would become Noct’s automatic way of thinking, too. Growing up with his dad visibly fading from keeping the Wall up had meant Noct had always felt the blade poised to pierce his heart, but it felt as if it had moved an inch closer, just starting to draw blood.

He went out and squinted up at the sky. It was a nice day but it was already mid-afternoon so they’d probably be staying in the motel again tonight, unless Ignis wanted to move them to one of the havens nearby before nightfall.

“Noct! Hey.”

“Hi,” Noct said, hiding a wince as Prompto’s boots left a mark on the matte black hood of the Regalia as he scrambled off it. Prompto’s happiness at seeing Noct was so obvious, it was hard to be mad at him.

“You look okay,” Prompto said, so surprised that Noct must have really looked like hell.

“I feel better,” he said and Prompto smiled. “How are you?”

Prompto looked down and fiddled with the strap of his camera. “Okay. You know, it’s fine.”

“Yeah,” Noct said. He looked around them, feeling heavy, and beckoned Prompto over to the porch of the motel, feeling a bit ridiculous because there was nobody around really, but this felt like it was private. “Prom… you know you don’t have to stay with me, right?”

Prompto jerked his head up and stared at Noct, stricken. “You’re kicking me out?”

“No!” Noct said, feeling awkward and stupid and afraid. “No, I don’t _want_ you to go, I just thought… I know this isn’t what you signed up for, okay?”

“I signed up to come with you,” Prompto said. “We’re still roadtripping, right? Kind of.”

“Yeah,” Noct said. “I mean, yeah, but… you were right, at the hotel. It’s not safe for us anywhere now. I just meant, if you didn’t want to stay, it’s fine.”

Prompto thumbed at his camera for a moment while Noct kicked at the ground, feeling awkward and mad and scared, and then Prompto looked up again and said, “I never thought I’d have friends like you guys, you know?”

“Yeah?” Noct said. “That’s… we’d still be friends, Prompto. I wouldn’t blame you.”

Prompto shook his head. “I want to come with you,” he said softly.

“Okay,” Noct said. “Okay then. Cool.”

“Okay,” Prompto said.

“Okay,” Noct said.

***

Noct was racing with adrenaline and fierce victory, the sparking meltdowns of the Nifs and their baby general in his war machine still crackling through him like an alchemical reaction with his own magic. They drove past the ruined blockade and through into Duscae and he surveyed the lush green of it in the fading light like it was really still his.

They passed an outpost and not even Prompto said anything about pulling over to get out of the dark. Noct wanted it to be just them, time to sit down and absorb what they'd done, so when Ignis looked at him in the rear view and said, “I can see a haven trail ahead on the left…?” he nodded.

Ignis cooked a casserole, simple and hearty, full of the last of the dualhorn meat they’d hunted in Leide and so much wild garlic Noct could feel it sweating out of his pores in the humid heat of the night. It was hard to believe they were only a couple of hours’ drive out of the aridity of the desert and Noct was struck, again, by the uncomfortable knowledge of how much his the battles of his father’s time had lingered in their land, their people: the dustbowl behind them didn’t seem natural, now, comparing it to the wetlands here, free from the signs and spoils of old war.

The meal was heavy and comforting, but Noct was still wired when Prompto went into the tent, yawning.

“You coming?” Gladio said, looking between Noct and Ignis. The fight and victory earlier had seemed to cheer him up, as had the prospect of meeting up with Iris soon, but now he seemed watchful again.

“Yeah, soon,” Noct said. He held up his hand and Gladio nodded grudgingly at the faint glimmers of magic still leaving chemtrails around his skin.

“Likewise,” Ignis said, and took another slow sip of his wine: to celebrate they’d broken out one of the bottles Dad had given them for the trip, from a case laid down the year Noct had turned sixteen, which had been a good vintage, rather than the year Noct was born, which hadn’t. Noct didn’t have a great taste for wine but he knew enough to appreciate quality, and it was nice wine; Gladio was more of a beer drinker, but he seemed to accept Ignis’s wanting to savour it.

And then they were alone. Sort of. Noct reminded himself that Prompto and Gladio were only a thin tent’s wall away. The lack of privacy had been helpful when he’d been trying to avoid his feelings for Ignis, but now it was just frustrating.

“Finally,” Ignis said under his breath, and Noct smiled involuntarily as Ignis unfolded his long legs from the camp chair and reached for Noct’s hand to pull him up and draw him over to the other side of the haven, where Ignis’s cooking station was clean and ready to fix breakfast. “Noct -”

Noct pulled him in. Ignis made a brief sound of surprise, but he slipped his arms around Noct’s waist almost immediately and kissed back, slick and slow and deep. 

Noct was settled by the contact, the nervy energy of the battle finally dissipating, or maybe just being squashed under the fire in his belly rising for a very different reason. He moaned into the kiss, felt Ignis’s tongue flick into his mouth to muffle him and pressed closer, spreading his legs over the thigh Ignis pushed up between, hard muscle meeting hardening dick and making his fingers spasm tight in Ignis’s hair. 

Noct hadn’t really meant to start something, but everything felt just a little better when Ignis touched him: he'd always understood Noct the best, knew what Noct needed to be calm and able to face the world. He wasn't going to take that for granted, not when just a few days ago he'd thought he'd never get to have this again. He sighed into Ignis’s mouth and wriggled against him, his body heating up even while his mind went still. 

Ignis pulled away, throwing a glance over Noct’s shoulder at the tent, and Noct closed his eyes against the look in Ignis’s when Ignis rubbed his thumb against Noct’s cheek, so intimate Noct could hardly deal with how much he needed it. “We have to be quiet,” Ignis whispered and Noct nodded frantically and bit down on his lip, tasting copper-blood as a tiny unnoticed injury from the battle reopened, as Ignis went to his knees. 

Ignis’s mouth around him was hot and skilled and Ignis made a tiny wet noise of satisfaction as Noct braced himself on the table behind him and pushed his cock smoothly inside, teasing the back of Ignis’s throat for just a second before he pulled back and let Ignis take control, closed his eyes and lost himself to Ignis's clever tonguework around the sensitive head of his cock. Ignis knew him so well, his mouth a familiar paradise, and Noct said unsteadily, “I'm not gonna… _fuck_ , yeah,” as Ignis started rhythmic hard suction, his fingers digging into the backs of Noct’s thighs. 

Ignis moaned around him at the sound of his voice, too loud. Noct glanced at the tent - had the flap just rustled as if someone was peeking out? - but he felt too good to worry about it right now, couldn't have stopped Ignis even if a daemon had jumped up on the haven. 

“Touch yourself,” he said, breathless, needing to know Ignis was with him in this like with everything. “Make yourself come with my cock in your mouth, I wanna see it.”

Sometimes Ignis had his own ideas, he didn't always do everything Noct told him in bed, but sometimes he was indulgent. Today he looked up at Noct, eyes glittering with arousal, lips stretched smirking and pink around the weight of Noct’s cock and Noct had to stick his fist in his mouth to stop himself outright yelling as Ignis undid his belt, one-handed even though it was stiff and shiny enough Noct sometimes had trouble with it using two, and palmed the urgent jut of his cock.

That was pretty much it for Noct’s control. Watching Ignis’s eyes flutter closed and a tear squeeze out as Noct fucked unsteadily for his throat again, craning to see the head of Ignis’s cock poke out the top of his underwear and darken the cotton with how much Ignis was enjoying sucking Noct’s dick, it was more than he could have controlled himself over even on his good days, and this was way off his best.

He wanted to say Ignis’s name, couldn’t risk how loud it would come out. He slipped his hand into Ignis’s hair instead, carefully behind the upstand of his fringe, like Ignis was always telling him to, and Ignis looked up at him again as Noct came into his mouth, his knees trembling and his fingers spasming and pulling Ignis’s hair harder than he’d meant. It made Ignis moan around his cock, extending the orgasm by precious seconds that felt longer, and Noct collapsed against him hard and grateful as Ignis stood all in a rush, pushed Noct’s shirt up and jerked his own cock to finish messily on Noct’s stomach. 

He didn’t have the strength to stop Ignis when Ignis reached for a damp dishtowel and cleaned him off. Just leaned against him and closed his eyes, listened to Ignis’s breaths heaving fast in his chest and felt them gusting hot against his temple as Ignis pressed his open mouth there.

“I’m gonna stink of come,” he mumbled, trying to sound mad, but he felt boneless and dozy and he couldn’t really work it up in himself to care. The cooking station wasn’t the steadiest of places to make out, but Noct really wanted to. He’d missed that even more than actual sex, maybe, lazy slow kissing after sex, just enjoying being close. Ignis sighed into his hair and staggered them back into a camp chair, which probably also wouldn’t hold the both of them for long, but Noct curled into him anyway.

“That tent’s smelled of worse,” Ignis said. “All four of us are rather ripe, after that battle. I don’t think they’ll notice.”

Noct doubted that but he had a mutually-assured-destruction defence of at least one example of Prompto knocking one out next to them in the dark when he’d thought they’d all been asleep, so probably nobody would bring it up. 

“Let them be mad,” he said. He lifted his head and stared into Ignis’s eyes, letting himself get lost in them. This was straightforward, now they were together again; this was easy and necessary. “You've got my back?”

“Always,” Ignis promised, his voice ragged, and Noct closed his eyes and kissed him again, clinging, safe. 

 

END


End file.
